Back in 2017, I asked on the WTM Global Hub Certification: what comes next? I was, and am, critical of certification. Two decades ago, I wrote, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if certificates were awarded for achieving an acceptable level of water and energy consumption per bed night, for paying wages above minimum wage levels and meeting a minimum set of labour standards.” That remains a pipe dream.
However, efforts are now being made to make certification less opaque. To enable the consumer to experience the positive consequences of the business taking responsibility.
Nearly two decades on, the number of hotels that are certified is remarkably small. Fuentes, Mellinas, Fernández, and Font concluded after analysing 6,696 hotels in the world’s top 100 city destinations that “hotels and platforms must integrate visible, guest-relevant sustainability actions into the experience and communication flow, rather than relying on badges or back-of-house practices alone.”
In their paper, Fuentes et al. recommend
- Certification and reporting currently have a limited influence on perceptions or satisfaction. To shift this, sustainability needs to be visible, relevant, and experientially integrated—something guests can notice and value, not just paperwork behind the scenes.
- Do not stop at certification compliance. Focus on sustainable experience design: surface sustainability where it adds customer value and where guests can see and feel it.
- Make sustainability tangible in the guest journey: connect visible actions (e.g., refill stations, local sourcing, energy-saving features) to clear, simple explanations so guests can link them to their stay experience.
Booking.com has pointed out that by “… encouraging guests to act more sustainably during their stay, you’ll bring them along on your journey and unlock the full benefits of the efforts you’re already making.”
It is clearly important to engage and empower guests to take responsibility and to feel good about doing good. In December 2025, Booking.com published extensive advice about shifting the narrative from burden to benefit, encouraging properties to “Empower guests to act more responsibly through choice and control” and to communicate “as a peer- not a preacher.”
Drawing on research by Professor Xavier Font from the University of Surrey, they conclude:
“Guests want to do more – but only if they’re guided, not guilted. When testing message effectiveness, the research found that messaging that focuses on comfort, pleasure, and shared values consistently performs better than strict directives.”
Quite so. As Krippendorf wrote in the Holiday Makers in 1987, “Orders and prohibitions will not do the job – because it is not a bad conscience that we need to make progress, but positive experience, not the feeling of compulsion but that of responsibility.”
